A Gift of Hope Adoptions

Below is a guest post by AGOHA adoptive mom Nicole Frederick, MA, who recently brought home her second child. She brings a unique perspective as a military adoptive mom. This week she concludes with specific steps to take to get your little one home as quickly as possible. 

After investigating various offices around our duty station, I was amazed by how little information about adoption the base was able to provide.  Each office I visited gave me the same response, “Hmmm.  We’re not really sure.  Maybe you could try___________”.  And thus began the wild goose chase.  I searched the internet and contacted everyone I could think of to find a way to get our daughter back to Japan quickly.  Looking at all the information I had collected, I was able to piece together some useful ideas to help our adoption move smoothly and to get a passport issued for our daughter.  Most of the information can help anyone who is adopting, but some of it is specific to military families.

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    Find an adoption agency with experience working with military families- Do your research.  Find an adoption agency that is willing to accept a homestudy from any licensed social worker.  Ask the agency to provide an outline/sample format of a homestudy to make the process easier for the social worker. 

·      Be organized- Buy a multiple section folder in which to store all of your adoption material.  Before finding a social worker, ask your agency if there are specific forms needed for your medical exam, fingerprinting, letters of reference, etc.  Gather these forms and complete as many as possible BEFORE beginning your homestudy.  This will make the process go much faster.  Items that I recommend having before completing a homestudy include: copies of every family members’ birth certificates, copies of marriage and/or divorce certificates, physical/mental health exams done by a qualified physician and/or mental health provider, copies of your most recent tax return, and five letters of reference (three from non-family members and two from family members).  Begin an ongoing itemized worksheet of ALL adoption expenses including payment information, to whom the money was paid and the services performed.   Make copies of everything and keep them in a separate location in your home or scan and email copies of paperwork to yourself.  If traveling alone, visit your attorney or base legal office to obtain general power of attorney to sign documents for your spouse as well as special power of attorney for all adoption related decisions. 

·      Find a licensed social worker- If you are living in the states, finding a licensed social worker is usually not difficult.  However, finding a licensed social worker while living overseas can be more challenging.  Contact your base mental health clinic and ask if they have any licensed social workers that are able to do adoption homestudies.  Your area may also have an online adoption forum that could guide you to a social worker.  Other resources may include the Airman Family and Readiness Center, Base Legal or the LINKS program.  You will need to ask your social worker to provide you with copies of their license. 

·      Contact an attorney-Once you are matched with a birthmother, ask your adoption agency to help you find an attorney.  Ask the attorney to speak to the court in the county where the adoption will take place BEFORE you retain the attorney’s services.  Make sure that the court knows that you are a military family, where you are stationed, and how your homestudy was completed.  This is critical because every state (and sometimes even counties) has different criteria as to whether homestudies from licensed social worker are acceptable or if it has to be from a licensed agency.  Some states will approve a homestudy from a licensed social worker as long as a local adoption agency will sign off on it.  If the court is already appraised of the situation before the termination of parental rights/transfer of custody hearing, then you are less likely to have any unhappy surprises at court.  Ask your attorney to request a court order for issuance of passport.  This court order can usually be approved at the transfer of custody hearing/termination of parental rights hearing. 

·      Getting a passport for your new child- If you are stationed overseas or simply if you are traveling soon after the birth/transfer of custody of your child, there are lots of different ways to obtain passports quickly including using passport expediting companies such as visaexpress.net or passportexpress.com.   However, expediting companies can be expensive and usually will not refund your money if any mistake is made on the application or if a passport photo is rejected.  I was able to obtain a passport for my daughter in less than 24 hours from application time until I had her passport in hand by visiting a national passport center.  Here is how I did it:

•  Locate a national passport center.  You can do this by calling 1-877-487-2778.  You can also make an appointment at the same time. 
• If you are traveling alone to adopt your child- from the U.S. Department of State website (http://travel.state.gov/passport), print out form DS-3053.  Have the parent that is NOT traveling take the form to a notary and have it signed in front of the notary (usually banks on base or base legal can provide notary services).  This form grants the parent that is traveling permission to obtain a passport.  You will also need a copy of the front and back of your spouse’s military identification card or driver’s license. 
• After your baby is born, request that the attorney obtain several original copies of your baby’s birth certificate.  This needs to be an official copy with the County or State seal on it (the hospital issued certificate is not accepted). If you are fortunate enough to have a positive relationship with your birthmother, you can kindly request that she go with you to the county clerk office to obtain original copies.  Our birthmother was amazing enough to go with me and I was able to obtain five originals right away for a total of $35.   
•  Gather the required materials: To expedite a passport from a national passport center, you MUST have proof of departure within 14 days.  Proof of departure can include a receipt for travel plans, a confirmed itinerary or tickets. You will also need an original birth certificate for your child, the notarized form DS-3053 (if traveling alone), a court order for obtaining a passport, an original copy of the transfer of custody from the court, two passport photos of your little one, completed form DS-11 (also located on http://travel.state.gov/passport website). 

·      Military Info- If you are in the military, the active duty service member will need to register your child for DEERS (Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System) as soon as you have an original copy of your child’s birth certificate as well as an original copy of the transfer of custody.  In some branches of the service, you may also need a command sponsorship letter for eligibility into Tricare (military health care program).  For more information, visit the Tricare office at your local military treatment facility or your base personnel office. 

·      Take a deep breath- You can do this!  Break up the monotony of paperwork by having some fun.  Remember, you are doing this to bring your child home!   Take care of yourself, eat well, exercise and spend time with friends.  Doing things that you enjoy will make the time go by more quickly and make the tough times seem more manageable. 

Below is a guest post by AGOHA adoptive mom Nicole Frederick, who recently brought home her second child. She brings a unique perspective as a military adoptive mom. This week she will share her story, next week some specific tips on how to adopt while currently an active member of our armed forces – even when stationed overseas!

It was somewhere around the 7^th hour of flying that I began to doubt if we would ever make it back home.  Some of the other passengers regarded me with sympathy, but the majority was trying to mentally eject my screaming newborn daughter from the plane.  I imagined them thinking, “Who is this horrible mother dragging a three week old infant across the world?” as they shot laser beams out of their eyes towards us.   

 I was tired, cranky, and I definitely smelled suspicious after wrestling with luggage, a car seat, stroller, and infant by myself.  I tried every possible arrangement of airplane pillows to find a comfortable way to feed her before I allowed myself to acknowledge that no such position actually existed.  Though I had carefully premeasured formula before boarding, the plane seemed to hit turbulence every time I tried to mix a bottle so that my previously blue shirt was now spotted with fstains and baby vomit. After a journey through customs and yet another plane ride, we landed.  I collected our luggage in a shaky rush and stumbled bleary-eyed into the arms of my husband and watched as he met our daughter for the first time, all of the stress of traveling simply melted away. 

 The day we had arrived home was Christmas Eve and I REALLY needed coffee to combat the jet lag.  As I sat at Starbucks with my husband, my son, and my new daughter, I noticed the politely averted stares and curious smiles of the locals as they regarded my colorful little family; Caucasian parents, a two-year-old African American boy, and a biracial newborn girl with bright blue eyes living in Okinawa.

 My husband is a psychologist with the United States Air Force and we are stationed in Japan.  We adopted domestically, but to do so, traveled around the world to the states and returned home to a foreign country.  Adoption is difficult under the best of circumstances but adopting while in the military brings with it some unique challenges, especially if stationed overseas or if the service member is deployed.  I have encountered many military families who wanted to adopt but were so overwhelmed by the demands of frequent moves that might interrupt a homestudy, difficulty finding a qualified social worker to do the homestudy, lack of information on adoption (or conflicting information) available to military service members and their families, confusion over how to obtain a passport, and rejection from adoption agencies that found working with military families stationed overseas to be too cumbersome.  The mantra that I heard most often was, “We would really like to adopt, but it is just so hard and we don’t know where to begin.” 

Nicole R. Frederick (Adoptive Mom of Two)

 M.A., Counseling Psychology

Continuing with the feel-good series of the year, and this time we are going to focus on your flaws. Yep, you are not perfect. I’ll let you digest that for a moment. Have you swallowed your pride and decided to read on? Good for you, perhaps we can move forward. You see, many adoptive families give me a laundry list of what they are looking for in their child, usually culminating in the child being healthier, prettier and smarter than they could possibly deliver in a biological child. Now I’m not saying that I can’t place that particular child; I have done so many times. But what most adoptive parents don’t realize (or choose to ignore) is that when I have that child to place, it is not the agency who chooses the adoptive family, it is that child’s birth mother. And she might not want you to parent her child. More digestion required here I see. I’ll wait.

Did you get that – she doesn’t want you to be the adoptive family. Guess what, that’s fine. It’s not your decision, it’s hers. Just because you are shown on a particular situation that you think must be meant for you because it’s absolutely everything you want doesn’t mean you will get chosen. So get over it. Seriously, get over yourself. You are not God’s gift to every birth mom. You aren’t supposed to be. Every birth mom (or birth family – sometimes the birth fathers are involved too you know) has her own idea of what the perfect family for her child looks like. Sometimes it’s a general idea, sometimes there are very defined specifics that are deal breakers for her. Sometimes that changes as she goes through the process. And she has every right to that, even when it's hard to define or articulate. No one, not her social worker, not her extended family and certainly not grabby adoptive families should be trying to convince her otherwise. Sometimes this is hard; sometimes she does have to embrace a reality check too because her list is unrealistic. But usually she has many choices and chooses the family who she thinks will be the best from her point of view. Read that sentence again – HER point of view, not yours. Not even mine.

I get very frustrated with adoptive parents who seem to assume that because they have a certain characteristic that they will of course be chosen any time they are shown. This is part of the reason we tend not to share every time you are shown – because if you are not chosen we both have to deal with the fallout. Does this mean you shouldn’t adopt? Of course not, I didn’t say you were wrong for every situation. But you do have to accept that you will be rejected by more prospective birth mothers than you will be accepted by. For those of you who sat at the cool kids lunch table in high school this will require a giant paradigm shift. For the rest of us it will be same ‘ole story, different face. But for those of us who were unpopular nerds in high school can testify to the fact that initial rejection often leads to a much better situation later on, and this holds true in adoption as well. Yes waiting is hard. But again, the wait isn’t about you, although the stress makes it seem that way. The wait is for your child, and as parents – you will become parents! – we wait a lot. We wait in the doctor’s office, in the carpool, for the potty. This one is longer than most, but the payoff is greater too. If you can get over yourself, that is. And I will be very clear – if you cannot get over yourself you should not adopt. I realize this is frustrating, but what I have learned over the years is just because you may be great parents does not mean you would be great adoptive parents, and our children deserve the best parents they can have, whether biological or adoptive.  

BTDT = Been There Done That

So you've heard the professionals suggestions for Do's and Don'ts on how to survive the wait for a match. However admittedly, not every adoption social worker is an adoptive parent, some of us just believe in it enough to keep working for you. So probably you wonder what it's really like for adoptive parents to wait for that fateful phone call. If you really want a play by play of what it's like for social workers just ask, really. Below is some advice from AGOHA adoptive mom Cindy, who may now consider herself a veteran waiter.

So, now you know what we think you should do, now let’s hear what we think you shouldn’t do. Let’s face it, waiting makes you crazy. Some of us were crazy to begin with, and this just focuses the crazy. Others were not crazy (or thought they weren’t anyway) and the wait brings out the crazy they never knew was there.

Unfortunately, particularly for people who never knew how grueling the wait can be, there are those things that you think might be helpful that actually will make it worse. I’ll address the major one from a professional point of view and include a few others as well.

The big one you think will help you settle and actually will ruin your life – asking to be notified every time your profile is shown or checking in with your adoption professional obsessively. Read it again. Note that I did not say never check in, or that you should never know if you are being shown. However, if you hire someone to help you network/advertise/provide matching services, there is some element of trusting that decision and your ability to hire solid professionals. Trust me when I say if you knew every time we sent out your profile, directed someone to the Waiting Family page on our website, talked you up on the phone to someone who seemed like a good match, you would be a complete wreck. Not every prospective birth parent will pick a family right away, not every one will pick period – some choose to use another adoption professional, or parent their child instead. Guess what – that’s totally fine. Just because you are waiting to adopt and they are considering it does not mean every situation is a perfect match for you. But if you knew every time, you would start to wonder what was wrong with you or your profile and it just spirals down into obsessive profile changes or general depression about adoption in general.  So how do you balance not being obsessive about knowing every detail about every situation you’ve ever had the possibility of being considered for and just not knowing anything ever including whether the people you hired are actually doing their job? First, do your homework when choosing an adoption professional. Second, check in occasionally – say quarterly, with your rep or social worker to see if there is any feedback from prospective birth parents on your profile and how the agency is doing in general. All agencies have slow times, so don’t freak out if you haven’t been shown. Sometimes you can go 2 months without being shown and then get shown 3 times in one month. It is not an exact science, but make sure you know what your adoption professional’s averages are. Third, keep your agency aware of your situation – always notify them with any changes in your life or if you will be gone on vacation give updated contact info. Below are some more general Don’ts while you wait.

• Don’t panic. It will happen, but panicking about when or how won’t do anyone any good.
• Don’t look up every photolisting, every professional situation posting, every adoption network site for posted situations needing adoptive families. Again, it will make you crazy.
• Don’t look longingly at baby magazines or decorate your nursery if it will make things worse. Buy one item occasionally, but decorating the whole nursery and then staring at it will only make it harder.
• Don’t play the what-if game. You can’t erase your past, you can’t control your infertility, and you can’t force a birth mother to pick you. You can still have a family through the miracle of adoption.

Recently a colleague and I were discussing some of the questions we get from women considering adoption plans for their unborn (and occasionally, born) children.  One of the questions that never ceases to amaze us – and that we get frequently – is “So do you think you will have anyone who wants my baby?” It’s usually all I can do to restrain myself from yelling “YES! YES! A Thousand Times YES!!!”  I will attempt to maintain my composure and assure her that we likely have multiple adoptive family profiles that she can review and if she doesn’t like any of those we can get her more to view quickly. While you get the occasional scammer or birth parent that is the adoption equivalent of a gold-digger, this is not the norm. Most are generally seeking to be the best parent they can possibly be for their child, even if that means making the extraordinarily difficult decision to let someone else raise that child as their own. While her pregnancy may not be exactly what she wanted, I can assure the woman in that situation that there is someone, indeed more than one someone, who DESPERATELY wants that pregnancy, and has gone through a lot of heartbreak and jumped through a lot of legal hoops to be approved to parent. I don't want to seem insensitive to those in difficult situations; pregnancy is stressful and will change your life forever, regardless of your situation and whether you planned to be pregnant or not. But whether the pregnancy was wanted by you or not, the pregnancy and the child you are carrying is wanted.  Your child is so loved, and not just by you. We always tell our clients you can never have too many people love a child, and adoption ensures that the adopted child has so many people available to provide love for that little one. Every time I hear the term “unwanted pregnancy” my eye starts to twitch and I grit my teeth because

The truth is someone, somewhere desperately wants that pregnancy, and desperately loves that child.

Don’t buy the myth of the unwanted pregnancy, and for those of us in support positions for these women and their beautiful children, let’s do what we can to change that stereotype. [facebooksimplelike]